Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I will speak to amendment No. 15, particularly as the Bill relates to three and four-person households, especially four-person households.

What the Minister and the supporters of the Bill have been saying is that the so-called excessive use charge, the penalty, will only apply to what are being described as water wasters, 8% of consumers of water in the State. The way in which the Bill is constructed means that for a one, two, three and four-person household one gauges it on the basis of average household size, 2.75, which means that if it is a one or two-person household one would want to be using a hell of a lot of water. A three-person household is slightly discriminated against but a four-person household is really discriminated against. It means in reality that if a four-person household uses anything more than 1.16 times the average, it will then be hit with the excessive use charge. In other words, a four-person household which uses 17% more water than the average, which is only slightly so, will be hit with an excessive use charge when the excessive use charge comes in on 1 July 2019. In less than two years' time a four-person household which uses 17% more water than the average will get hit with an excessive use charge which in my view is water charges through the back door or by another name.

I do not have statistical data to hand on this but I would imagine there are probably more four-person households now than was the case in previous years given the number of young adults who are unable to purchase their own home or pay rent for private rented accommodation and who are staying at home with their parents. According to the Central Statistics Office in the census of 2016, a total of 500,000 young adults are staying at home with their parents. I do not expect the Minister or Fine Gael to change their position. I am posing the question most sharply to the Fianna Fáil representatives on the committee. Are they going to stand over a section of the Bill which says that a four-person household will be charged an excessive use charge, water charges by another name, in less than two years' time if they use less than 20% above the average water usage? There needs to be some debate on this topic.